I've never paid attention to how hot my L2 gets in my 486, but consider that back then cooling wasn't at all like it is today. Typically the only fan was the PSU exhaust. Some cpus required a fan--some didn't even require a heatsink! If it makes you feel better, maybe you can custom-mount a case fan and point it at the L2 area.

How hot do your L2 chips get? Can you put your finger on them for more than a couple of seconds without feeling the burn? I may be wrong, but in my experience the L2 SRAM chips only get moderately warm. Maybe you've got a short somewhere?

Anyway, regarding the cooling, AT cases are generally pretty limited, but some of them allow for mounting an 8mm fan in the lower front (or you could find a way to ghetto-mount one). For cooling specific chips on the board, you could get some heatsinks and use double-sided thermal tape, but as I said before, other than the CPU I have never noticed any chips on a 486 running hot enough to require cooling.

I feel the heat after some seconds and they are nearly as hot as my CPU, without Heatsink or cooler (AM5x86 ADZ no heatsink/cooler req)
I hope not that it is a short...
I'm just a little bit worried, because if I would put a long ISA card there the card also could get really hot because of the L2 Cache.
I will just try the heatsink approach if the problem will still occure, because I think there won't be enough room for a 8mm which is cooling the right area. (too many cables in the way 😉 )
Could this occure if one of the SRAM chips are broken in a way? (Didn't tested the build with himem or chkcache or somethink right now, just tested if it recognize everything).

i would suggest a cooler for the x5 anyways...even with only a heatsink, my ADZ get's really hot. Do him a favour 😉

I'm waiting for this right now 😉 is ordered, but not delivered...
Would be mad, cooling everything incl. L2 cache but not the CPU 😉

Karm wrote:

I'm waiting for this right now 😉 is ordered, but not delivered...
Would be mad, cooling everything incl. L2 cache but not the CPU 😉

wouldn't 2 P1 coolers placed on top of the chips give plenty of cooling with a tip of cooling paste/thermal pad cool the chips plenty when not using full isa cards? I have one lying around which is iirc 50x50 so they should fit perfectly on 1 bank of cache.

edit:
forgot I still had a picture of my AT build last year. I mounted a 120mm fan in front of the case (cut the case to fit a intake fan)

Maybe some of those Zalman GPU ram heatsinks?

@Richo: do you've got a picture of the p1 coolers you are talking about?
in general I think a heatsink should be enough for cooling them, a fan would be even better.
the solution with the fan looks really nice, if it fits somehow, I will definitely try it 😉

@meljor: the heatsinks look very squared, I have to look if they would fit on the L2 bank. And then there would be still the problem with the tag Ram, but I think this I have to solve in a different way, because if I put a heatsink or fan on the L2 bank, I can't put something on the tag ram, or I can't use any long ISA card on the board...